Capetian in the context of "Franco-Ottoman alliance"

From 1340, English monarchs, beginning with the Plantagenet king Edward III, asserted that they were the rightful kings of France. They fought the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453), in part, to enforce this claim, but ultimately without success. From the early 16th century, the claim had lost any realistic prospect of fulfilment, although every English and, later, British monarch, from Edward III to George III, styled themselves king or queen of France until 1801.

Edward's claim was through his mother, Isabella, sister of the last direct line Capetian king of France, Charles IV. Women were excluded from inheriting the French crown and Edward was Charles's nearest male relative. On Charles's death in 1328, however, the French magnates supported Philip VI, the first king of the House of Valois, a cadet branch of the Capetian dynasty. Philip was Charles's nearest male line relative. French jurists later argued that it was a fundamental law of the kingdom that the crown could not be inherited through the female line. This was supposedly based on the 6th-century Frankish legal code known as the Salic law, although the link to the Salic law, which was tenuous in any case, was not made until the 15th century.

Louis VII (1120 – 18 September 1180), called the Younger or the Young (French: le Jeune) to differentiate him from his father Louis VI, was King of France from 1137 to 1180. His first marriage was to Duchess Eleanor of Aquitaine, one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in western Europe. The marriage temporarily extended the Capetian lands to the Pyrenees.

Louis was the second son of Louis VI of France and Adelaide of Maurienne, and was initially prepared for a career in the Church. Following the death of his older brother, Philip, in 1131, Louis became heir apparent to the French throne and was crowned as his father's co-ruler. In 1137, he married Eleanor of Aquitaine and shortly thereafter became sole king following his father's death. During his march, as part of the Second Crusade in 1147, Louis stayed at the court of King Géza II of Hungary on the way to Jerusalem. During his stay in the Holy Land, disagreements with Eleanor led to a deterioration in their marriage. She persuaded him to stay in Antioch but Louis instead wanted to fulfil his vows of pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He was later involved in the failed siege of Damascus and eventually returned to France in 1149. Louis' reign saw the founding of the University of Paris. He and his counsellor, Abbot Suger, pushed for greater centralisation of the state and favoured the development of French Gothic architecture, notably the construction of Notre-Dame de Paris.

Marie of France (1145 – 11 March 1198) was a Capetian princess who became Countess of Champagne by her marriage to Henry I of Champagne. She ruled the County of Champagne as regent during Henry I's absence from 1179 to 1181; during the minority of their son Henry II from 1181 to 1187; and during Henry II's absence from 1190 to 1197. She was the daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Louis VII of France.

Henry (Portuguese: Henrique, French: Henri; c. 1066 – 22 May 1112), Count of Portugal, was the first member of the Capetian House of Burgundy to rule Portugal and the father of the country's first king, Afonso Henriques.